This is, indeed, an illuminating discussion.

Two points, if I may.

1. There is all the difference in the world between advocating actions to exclude certain persons from a discussion (e.g. bar or ban them) and questioning certain persons' intentions or motivations within the context of a discussion, without even considering seeking to exclude them. Indeed, if we agree that discussion benefits greatly from as wide an informed participation as possible, the only way to avoid an 'every uttered opinion is equally valid' mess is to openly question the motivations of others when we see that they are unlikely to be fully informed, yet are making assertions which require certain information. This is even more the case when those assertions are generalisations (e.g. Japanese universities are like this or like that.)
In response to such, what else would you expect anyone whose considerable and wide-ranging direct experience contradicts the generalisation to do?

2. In the light of some posts (one in particular) subsequent to my previous one, I would like to re-stress my point about the my doubts towards the validity of some of the premises that seem to be widely shared by participants here, most notably regarding the role of universities in society and the style of citizen action most likely to result in effective solutions to climate change issues.

Regarding the first, having read the description of what one staff member at one particular U.K. university feels are the proper policy focus for said institution, I found his comments to be.......and I am choosing my words carefully here....(in addition to having slept on my choice)....as nothing short of chilling.** (**I appreciate this is strong language, but I truly mean what I say.)

Regarding the second, the assumption that the most effective solution to climate change issues is social protest and disruption is mistaken, I believe. From such a perspective one may, as I do, conclude that 'the Japanese' are being more rational about this than 'the West.' Maybe it's just that the Japanese don't spend much, if any, of their energy on pushing their opinions on others because they better recall the old adage, "better to keep quiet and have everyone think you are a fool, than open your mouth and confirm their suspicions."



On Friday, October 11, 2019, 03:46:35 PM GMT+9, SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:


From: Andrew DeWit <dewit@rikkyo.ne.jp>

Date: 2019/10/10

2019/09/24 22:27、SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>のメール:
From: Peter Cave <Peter.Cave@manchester.ac.uk>

In Japan, on the other hand, a country of 126 million people,

severely affected by the climate crisis in all sorts of ways, including
more frequent and more powerful typhoons (one just this month) and heavy
rain resulting in disastrous floods last year, very little seems to be
happening. When I look at the Asahi Shinbun (Japanese) website, there
does not seem to be any mention of climate strikes, even overseas. The
same goes for the NHK top page.

First, congratulations for starting such a timely debate.

Second, hate to be pedantic, but a quick Google search shows the
Japanese media (from the Asahi to the Sankei) have been running "climate
strike" items for months.

Just to continue the Japan-Australia comparison, both countries are

liberal democracies with a highly educated population, impressive
universities and scientists, and a free press, and both are being
significantly affected by the climate crisis. So why the huge
difference? It's not as if people in Japan are completely unaware of the
issues. The term 'global warming' has been current for decades, and
ordinary people I know in Japan seem quite happy to acknowledge climate
change.

I would also like to ask a related question about Japanese politics.

I have not been following politics in Japan closely for a while (aside
from watching the news for the seven months I was in Japan during 2018),
but my impression is that green issues hardly feature in Japanese politics.

Indeed, an interesting question. A lot of the back-and-forth on this
thread seems to equate green with solar panels and other variable
renewables (like wind). And to be sure, over 21% of Australian
households have solar panels versus 8.3% in Japan (as of Oct 2018), and
Japan's percentage is only expected rise to 9.7% by 2030.

Yet the latest comprehensive data indicate Australia's power-sector
emissions (grams of CO2/kWh) greatly exceed Japan's, and even China's
(https://climateanalytics.org/publications/2019/australias-power-supply-brown-and-polluting/).


So perhaps we need to expand the range of metrics we use in assessing
what countries are doing, why, and the relative merits of their actions.

In this regard, surely one of the most interesting items about Japan is
that its opinion polls routinely show much stronger support for spending
on climate adaptation versus mitigation via renewables. This support for
disaster resilience has apparently helped policymakers at all levels
implement measures that promote adaptation and mitigation
simultaneously, something the IPCC stressed long ago.

Japan's melding of adaptation and mitigation is evident, for example, in
Kakegawa City (Shizuoka Prefecture), whose local National Resilience
plan's FY 2019 spend, continuing from previous years, is roughly 57%
green infrastructure (eg, forestry for tsunami/storm-surge resilience).

And Kakegawa is not an isolated case: Japan's MLIT, the Society of Civil
Engineers, the Federation of Construction Contractors, and other actors
recently produced major reports on green infrastructure's multiple
adaptation-mitigation synergies and how those decarbonizing,
biodiversity-enhancing, cost-cutting, etc synergies are being realized
in Japan.

Another metric worth exploring is Japan's integration of
disaster-resilience, decarbonizing transport, energy-efficient
infrastructure integration (eg, water systems), and other public goods
in compact city planning. Shrinking the spatial footprint of communities
helps reduce the community's per-capita material density, cutting
energy, fiscal and other costs in addition to alleviating the need to
deploy vast quantities of cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium, vanadium,
rare earths and the many other environmentally damaging critical
materials required for large-scale green energy (whose critical-material
densities are far greater, per unit energy output/storage, than for
dirty fossil energy, hydro, and nuclear).

Against the backdrop of rapidly diffusing renewable energy and electric
vehicles, the near-term outlook for supply/demand balances in these
energy-intensive critical materials is so fraught that Japan, the EU,
the US and etc have all started large-scale industrial policies to
secure them.

Of course, Chinese firms and the state are leagues ahead, as the FT
details at length in its July 7 piece on "Congo, child labor and your
electric car":
https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

This is not to say that Japan is doing anywhere near enough. But perhaps
Japan's broader initiatives on green deserve more attention for their
potential to afford materially-efficient, effective, disaster-resilient
and equitable solutions to multiple crises.

Andrew